| April 6, 2000 | 04 00067 61 00040601 |
Mr. Jack Park
Street address
Palo Alto, CA Zip
| Subject: | Markets and Opportunity for KM |
Dear Jack,
Thanks for feedback on using a diary to support knowledge management. Paul Fernhout's recent comments on XML and difficulties on knowledge representation point to a significant opportunity for moving ahead on a fruitful development path that is not well known. Eric Armstrong's excellent analysis on April 3 responding to your question about growing a new industry, is instructive; and, his commitment on April 4, to augment, rather than replace, human reasoning is correct. You have developed important advances to do this, and I have some approaches that may help. How then to exploit these assets to grow a new market that helps everyone?
Open source development is powerful for getting a lot of talent to work on tactical progress, where the grand scheme or direction has been put in motion. However, making assignments and getting things done can be problematic, when the task is to figure out strategic breakthroughs. People are excited by the Linux example, but it is not apposite. There is a lot of experience creating and working with operating systems, Unix, Apple, DOS, OS2, Windows and many more. This intellectual capital can be invested through an open source and proprietary efforts to create improvements and different flavors of Linux. However, there is no similar base of experience creating and using Knowledge Management on which to build specialized tools and work processes. Once that is unleashed everyone will benefit, in the way that the alphabet is a single environment with a simple, powerful design that augments human intelligence.
For example, you asked important questions yesterday, on the roll of "opinion" in knowledge work, and got minimal response. I set out similar questions on March 17, and got no response, indicating that foundational issues are not much fun. They do not get a lot of volunteers, because the payout seems remote. So, the question becomes how to marshal adequate forces to accomplish some difficult work that is not yet well understood. Late yesterday Doug submitted a letter proposing that attention be focused on WBI. He provided a comprehensive outline of tasks. Adam responded that he cannot wait to get to work. So that is the attitude we need.
Thanks again for thinking about this.
Sincerely,
THE WELCH COMPANY
Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net